The Rules of Magic (37 page)

Franny walked out knowing that her brother would not last that long.

They drove out to Sag Harbor. It was early spring and the trees were budding, but the air was still cool. It was a clear, bright, beautiful day, the air tinged with salt, the climbing roses blooming. They were in William's car, and they all wore black. They barely spoke, especially when they drove on the Sagtikos Parkway, past Pilgrim State.

“It's dreadful,” Jet did manage to say, and they all agreed.

Once in town, they stopped at the liquor store, thinking they would need the fortification. They needn't have worried. Alan Grant had wine opened on the table, and took a whiskey for himself.

“My advice will set you against the laws of our country.” Mr. Grant's expression was somber. “And I'm also afraid that in saving Vincent, I may endanger you,” he told his son. “You can be arrested if you aid a deserter.” He gestured to the sisters. “All of you can.”

“We'll take that chance,” Franny said.

“Then my suggestion is that Vincent must run. He's already made it clear he won't serve. He needs a passport and a plane ticket.”

“Pardon me?” Franny said. “He's in a hospital. He doesn't have a passport.”

“Then find him one, and get him the hell out of that place,” Mr. Grant told them.

“And then what?” Jet wanted to know.

Mr. Grant smiled and shook his head. “Then, my dear, prepare to never see him again.”

When they left the sun was on the water and everything seemed to gleam as they walked across the wide lawn to the car. They were all saddened by this day, and by knowing what they must do. When they reached the car, they lingered, as if trying to avoid the inevitable return to real life.

“You cannot lose someone you love, even if he is no longer beside you,” William said. “So we'll do as my father suggests. It's the only logical choice.”

“Are you willing to?” Franny asked. “No matter the cost?”

Franny had her arm around William's waist. Jet walked close beside them. They were in this together, this perilous, wonderful business of loving Vincent.

“We've already decided we would ruin our lives together,” William said. “So here we go.”

Franny phoned Haylin that same night. When he heard what had happened he left work before his shift was over, something he never did. He was committed to his patients, but this was different. It was urgent, it was Franny, the only one who could give him a feeling of recklessness. He got to Greenwich Avenue in no time, and she was waiting for him. She was so worried and so pale that he lifted her into his arms. They went upstairs, pulled off their clothes, then got under the quilt together. Haylin was too tall for the bed and he always banged his head against the wall. He had such long limbs it seemed he might fall onto the floor at any moment.

Whenever Hay was there, the crow made himself comfortable on the bureau. Otherwise he spent his time in the kitchen, near the radiator. Lewis preferred to stay in the house. Long flights were past him, still he seemed full of cheer when Haylin visited, flapping around joyously before he settled down. Hay always brought Ritz crackers, which were the crow's favorites.

“I need your help again,” Franny admitted.

“I suppose once you start breaking the law, it gets easier and easier to do,” Hay said. “I could lose my medical license over the asthma incident. Now what?”

“Now we have to get Vincent out of Pilgrim State.”

Hay had always thought Franny smelled like lily of the valley, which grew in wild clutches in the woodlands in Central Park each spring. He missed the past, but now that they were together again, he missed it less. Franny stroked his torso and his broad back, always amazed to find that he was now a man rather than the boy she'd first fallen in love with. But this wasn't love. They'd agreed to that. It was simply everything else.

“It's a secure facility,” Haylin said. “Should we think about this?”

“There's nothing to think about,” Franny said. “We have to get him out.”

“It's
we,
is it? But isn't this when
I
go to jail?” he asked with a grin.

“It's when you rescue someone.” Franny entwined her legs with his. She understood why ancient monsters were often made of two creatures, with two hearts and minds. There was strength in such a combination of opposites.

“Not you, I gather,” he murmured. “Because I wouldn't mind
rescuing you.” He held her beautiful red hair in one hand and told himself this wasn't love. He had to keep reminding himself of that. All the same, he knew he would step blindly forward to do whatever she asked. That had always been the case.

“Before you, I was the Maid of Thorns. I had no heart at all. You already rescued me,” Franny said right before she asked him to risk everything, unaware that she had been asking him to do so ever since they'd first met, and that he had been willing to do whatever she wished him to, even during the time they'd been apart.

In the hospital, Vincent's thoughts were cloudy, fragile things. They'd shaved off his hair and had him wear a uniform that barely fit his tall frame. He was not allowed a belt or socks, lest he try to commit suicide with them by hanging. He had gone berserk in the dormitory and was then shot up with medication and plunged into a cold bath. Then they tied him up so they could carry him down the hall to this small room. There were mice, he could hear them. He could hear footsteps in the hall. Here were the things to stay away from: metal, ropes, water, fear. He felt himself weakening by the second.

His face was bruised from the altercation in the dormitory, and he had lost a good deal of weight. He was a wraith, a shadowy creature. He was thankful William couldn't see him, didn't know what he had become. They continued to feed him medication that caused him to be plodding; it was Thorazine, a wretched pill that made him descend into a woozy state of mind. The Vincent he had been previously had been banished
to some distant part of the past, but not completely. He still knew how to play the game, and soon realized he could pretend to swallow the pills, even open his mouth to show they were gone, while keeping them tucked up along his gum. He would then spit them out when the nurse left him alone, then he'd hide them under the radiator. The first clear thought he had was a memory of an interview he had read with Jim Morrison, a singer and poet he admired for his rebellion.

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Freedom was the instinct of every mortal being, even those who thought they had no hope. This was his deepest fear, to be trapped and jailed, like his ancestors. If he hadn't been surrounded by metal he could have willed his window to open and climbed out, then dropped to the ground. He then would have stopped traffic and hitchhiked to the city, slipping into a car with any stranger who would have deposited him on a city street, so that he might disappear into the crush of people at Forty-Second Street and call William from a pay phone. But he could not reach that part of himself. He had lost himself in this place, as had so many others before.

All he could do was keep his eyes closed and do his best to get through the day.
I've tried before, I've locked the door, I've done it wrong, I've done it right.
He did not eat or fight back. He shivered with cold even when the heat was turned up high, the old metal radiators pinging. He still had marks on his wrists from being bound when he'd thought he could fight his way out. At
night he tried to get back the piece of his soul that had disappeared when they brought him here in irons.

He went over the spells he remembered from
The Magus,
doing his best to recall the magic that had once come to him so easily. He was convinced Aunt Isabelle's story of Maggie the rabbit was meant for him when he was hiding from himself, denying who he was. Now in the glinting half-light of the hospital room he practiced spells he had memorized. Although the newspaper on a cabinet fluttered and fell off the shelf, and a bowl and a plate rattled when he muttered curses, the aura of the place soon overtook him. It affected his brain and his soul alike. He couldn't even turn off the bright light that was kept on through the night. He was a rabbit in a cage. For most of the day he sat on a mattress on the floor. His feet were bare, long white feet that didn't look at all familiar, the feet of the dead.

To make himself aware that he was still alive, to save himself in some small way, he made himself think of the lake in Massachusetts, how cold and green it was, and of the garden where he'd played his first songs, and of April Owens standing in the grass in California, hands on her hips, telling him not to make promises he couldn't keep. He remembered Regina tagging after him, and the surprising swell of love he'd felt for her when she said she wanted to remember him. He transported himself to that moment, and he stayed there, in California. He no longer smelled the Lysol the janitors used to clean the floor, but rather there was the woodland scent of eucalyptus, so fragrant it made him dizzy.

He heard the door to his locked room open, but he was too far inside his head for it to matter. He had perfected the ability to hover somewhere outside of his own body, something he
had learned from
The Magus.
He was in California and the grass was golden. Nothing else mattered. He could stay forever if he wished.
Would you like some flowers?
Regina was saying. All of the flowers were red, and in the center of each, a bee drowsed. Someone sat down on the chair. Likely a nurse with his medication. Best ignored. He stayed inside his mind, fading into the tall golden grass.

“Wake up, kid,” a man's voice said. “You'd better pull yourself together.”

Vincent gazed across the room, his eyes slits. He glimpsed a man in a naval uniform. It was Haylin.

“Medical personnel are allowed in,” Haylin told him. “I have about twenty minutes, so you need to listen to everything I say.” He then tossed something to Vincent, and without thinking Vincent reached up and caught it. It was a set of car keys. It woke him up.

“What are these?” Vincent's mouth felt like cotton when he spoke. His eyes hurt when he opened them wider. Light poured in and he rubbed at his eyes with his fists.

“They're yours. You're driving a Ford.” Hay stood to drape his jacket over the pane of glass cut into the door. “We don't need the staff to know what we're doing.” He took off his shoes and his shirt, then stopped and gestured when he took note of Vincent sitting there in shock, unmoving. “Can you hurry up? You leave for Germany tonight and trust me—you do not want to miss your flight. Your sisters and William will have my hide if something goes wrong.”

Vincent smiled. He remembered how to do that.

“Let's go,” Haylin urged. “Step one. Get the hell out. But just know this. You can't contact any of us. You have to make a
clean break, otherwise we can be implicated and charged with abetting a federal offense.”